Founder and Editor of The Lanchester Review. Previous or occasional contributor to Prime Politics, Comment is Free, The First Post/The Week, Harry's Place, New Directions, The Brussels Journal, The London Progressive Journal, Labour Uncut, The American Conservative and Russia Today (RT). Available for work via davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, all lower case.

Friday, 29 June 2007

But It's Not America

On Question Time, Sir Menzies Campbell went off about the American pro-Israel lobby and its alleged influence over the Bush Administration. But Bush's real reaction to 9/11 was two-fold: he withdrew his father's troops from Saudi Arabia (America's closest ally in the world anyway, never mind under a Bush), and he declared himself in favour of a Palestinian state, making him the first President ever to use the term while in office.

Thus, to give him his due, he secured the American homeland, on which there has been no subsequent attack in nearly six years and counting.

But then, look at the actions of his predecessors: which administration, exactly, has ever been as pro-Israel as Europeans tend to assert is the default American position, and as the shriller American and other Zionists would clearly like to be the American default position? There is none.

By contrast, there is a country which really is run by an all-but-unchallenged Zionist lobby, on which see here.

6 comments:

If only it were true that your country is run by friends of Israel. However, one need only hear what your fellow countrymen say to know that your assertions are nonsense.

If your country were run by Zionists, why does your country not send troops to fight the Hamas and Hezbollah? Why does your country not threaten Syria? Why is there so much talk about Palestinian Arabs? In other words, your theory cannot be squared with the facts.

The facts: your country's government is influenced by many groups, among which are pro-Arab and pro-Israeli groups. And, when push comes to shove, your country goes with the oil, since that is where the money and political power align for a comparatively small power (i.e in size and influence) like Britain

But America DOESN'T support Israel, at least no more than anyone else does. Not really. In fact, the present administration is strikingly pro-Palestinian even by the stnadrds of these things.

America's closest ally, not just in the Middle East but in the world, is in fact Saudi Arabia. Their two ruling classes will do absolutely anything for each other. America doesn't have that sort of relationship with, say, Britain. And she certainly doesn't have it with Israel.

Most Americans might "prefer" that she did. But your lords and masters quite clearly couldn't care less what you do or do not "prefer".

The US supports Israel and the US supports Saudi Arabia. The US supports Britain also but that does not mean the US cannot support Irish demands - as it has done in the past. Diplomatically, the US has it both ways - and all over the world.

The president sought - or so he said - a Palestinian Arab state. But, my recollection is that was something the Israelis have also generally sought - and attempted on their own (and unknown, as it were, to the US), back in the early 1990's, which led to the disastrous Oslo initiative (disastrous in impact, not in intent) -, so long as that Palestinian Arab state does not come at the expense of undermining Israel.

By European standards, the US government tends to listen to the people. There is nothing quite like what goes on in Europe - with the EU mechanism churning on notwithstanding the results of elections. By way of a good example, consider what happened to the recent immigration bill, which the "elites" sought but which "the people" opposed. The "elites" - of both political parties along with the president - suffered a humiliating defeat and the bill died.

"The US supports Britain also but that does not mean the US cannot support Irish demands"?

Who are the "Irish" in this? The people you probably have in mind receive next to no votes in the Irish Republic, and used to receive scarcely more in Northern Ireland, for their view that their own self-perpetuating Army Council is the sovereign body, entitling those who act by its purported authority to behave in absolutely any way they like (bank robberies, drug-trafficking, prostitution, &c).

That negligible support in Northern Ireland was until successive American administrations decided to court popularity with Americans who clearly knew absolutely nothing about Ireland, by forcing both British and (to an extent) Irish governments to surrender to that claim to sovereignty. It is true that the Sinn Fein vote then went up in parts of Northern Ireland, when they started to look like they might win after all.

The upshot of all of this has been that those areas have now been handed over to the IRA to run as fiefdoms, in much the way that the Gaza Strip has been handed over to Hamas. The precedent established, Sinn Fein now has its eye on parts of the Dublin area, left behind by the Irish economic boom and by the Blairification of the Irish Labour Party.

All in all, so much for Ameriacn support for Britain. Or, indeed, for the Irish Republic.

As to the greater responsiveness of the American political class, what a thing it must be to inhabit the closed thought-system that is Americanism!

The American political system is exactly the Venetian oligarchy that the Founding Fathers really intended it to be, albeit now approaching a sort of self-parody, with the distinct possibility that for 20 or even 24 years (if not even longer) the Presidency will be occupied by the members of two families. Why bother having elections at all? Why not just let the Clintons and the Bushes alternate every eight years?

And who else is there? Al Gore? John Kerry? They don't quite make David Cameron look like a man of the people, although at least we can joke about his privileged background, shared by no Tory Leader (never mind Labour one) since the Sixties. In the US, it would be so unremarkable that no one would see what might be funny about it.

And Gore or Kerry is certainly a grand figure next to Gordon Brown (even though, like Margaret Thatcher, his background is not as humble as is somehow made out), or even Tony Blair (whose background is not quite as exalted as is sometimes made out).

So the fact that wholesale cravenness towards the House of Saud is an elite taste in America is actually why it is really the only absolute in American foreign policy. Ordinary Americans might prefer Israel, and they might prefer not to be so dependent on oil in the first place. But no one asked them. And no one is going to ask them.

About Me

Founder, Proprietor, Publisher and Editor of The Lanchester Review since 2013. Founder, Proprietor (for now), Publisher (for now) and Editor-in-Chief of Lanchester Books since 2014. Charity volunteer and administrator since 1994. Freelance journalist since 1996. Supply teacher and market research worker from 2002 until prevented by disability. Member of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham since 2006. Preventing the University of Durham’s undergraduates’ degrees from getting the way of their education since 2000.
Elected Parish Councillor from the age of 21 until I stood down voluntarily in 2013. During that time, Lanchester was among the first in the country to secure power of wellbeing, power of general competence, and Quality Parish Council Status.
At 21, I began eight years as a governor of a primary school which, at the time of my appointment, still had the same Headteacher as when I had been a pupil there. Three weeks short of 22, I found myself in the same position when I began eight years as a governor of a comprehensive school.
Since May 2013, a member of the Durham’s Police and Crime Commissioner's Community Panel.